Blow-moulding machines/stretch blow-moulding machines are frequently provided with a transport means, usually in the form of a blowing wheel that incorporates a multiplicity of blow-moulding stations. Each blow-moulding station contains mould carriers, mould carrier shells and/or moulds that usually accommodate preforms and that usually hold these preforms at the neck while the heated preforms are, by means of the injection of compressed air and usually also by means of the insertion of a stretching rod, enlarged, stretched and adapted to the inner wall of the moulds in order to form the desired final shape. This process, however, requires exact temperature control with precise heating and, where necessary, precisely such cooling. In the case of solutions of the hitherto existing type, the mould carrier, the mould carrier shell and/or the moulds of a stretch blow-moulding machine are tempered centrally depending on the process requirements. This is brought about by means of a heating and/or cooling module that is arranged outside of the blowing wheel. By means of this heating and/or cooling module, an operating medium (oil, water, other mixtures) is tempered and conducted from the central tempering module and on to the rotating blowing wheel by means of a rotary distributor. The rotary distributor has a multiplicity of connection points, from which individual lines (inlets and outlets of the operating media) are led to the individual mould carriers, mould carrier shells and/or moulds (also for neck cooling). The known development, however, requires high assembly costs for the distribution hoses and hose couplings, quality and inspection costs, complexity costs of the hoses/hose packages and, in particular, a high energy expenditure for the tempering due to the temperature losses, particularly during the relatively long transport from the tempering device to the blow-moulding station. The complexity costs are high, because different hose packages with different lengths have to be designed, purchased and assembled for each partition of the blowing wheel. This also applies to the spare part and service business. Because the hoses have to sustain high pressures, high-grade hoses in sufficient lengths must also be installed here.
The preforms, which are heated in an oven, are brought into a blow-moulding machine where they are stretched and blown, by means of compressed air, into containers. The preforms have a precisely adjusted temperature profile, in order to make it possible to carry out the stretch blow moulding process optimally. However, between the removal from the oven and the insertion into the blow-moulding station in the form of the placement into the blow mould, there exists a transfer section that is not especially well controlled on the part of the parameters for the temperature of the preform. Depending on the ambient temperatures (which can fluctuate greatly during the course of a day), the preform cools off in the transfer section differently and possibly no longer has the optimal temperature (distribution) for the stretch blow moulding process. After the preform is stretch blow moulded into a container, the finished container remains in the mould. The process of moulding the container from a preform requires only a short time, the longer time of the entire process being accompanied by simultaneous energy removal in the form of heat for the stabilization of the container in the mould.